Dear Reader,
Only in Jewish life: Christians are now primary funders of aliyah from the former Soviet Union and other crisis areas. In a controversial move, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has assumed the job the Jewish Agency long handled. Staff Writer Stewart Ain reports.
Israel Immigration Turf War Erupts
Anger over fundraising tactics of Int’l Fellowship of Christians and Jews as it launches new $20 million effort.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Under fire for pitch seen as critical of the Jewish Agency. Wikimedia Commons
The decision of a successful rabbi to launch his group’s own aliyah program to rescue Jews in conflict areas is being lauded by many, but his fundraising pitch to a largely Christian audience has raised concerns for suggesting he alone is helping those in distress.
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, said his group’s aliyah program resulted from the decision of the Jewish Agency for Israel to adopt a strategic plan in 2010 that focuses on strengthening Jewish peoplehood and identity instead of aliyah — although aliyah for Jews in distress would still be a priority.
“Not only is aliyah not on top of its list, but it has been suffering terrible deficits and budget cuts,” he said during a telephone interview from Israel. “The Jewish Agency just does not have the funds. We’ve already picked up a number of their programs, and there is a huge gap between the needs of the Jewish community worldwide and what the world Jewish community is providing them.”
He said his organization plans to spend $20 million in the next year to bring Jews from the former Soviet Union and other crisis regions to Israel, even giving each person $1,000 to help them resettle. The aliyah program is scheduled to begin Dec. 22 with about 200 Jews slated to fly from Ukraine to Israel. Eli Cohen, who headed the Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department from July 2008 until May 2011, will head the program.
But a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, Avi Mayer, insisted that his organization continues to help Jews in distress make aliyah. He noted that in the last Jewish year, 4,200 Jews in Ukraine made aliyah compared with 2,000 the previous year. And worldwide, 25,000 Jews made aliyah — a five-year high. As a result, the agency’s 2015 aliyah, absorption and rescue budget was increased slightly to a 10-year high of $62.7 million even as its operating budget was cut 1.2 percent to $364.7 million.
Mayer said that as a result of the change in the Jewish Agency’s strategic plan, many more departments deal with aliyah.
“Our entire organizational structure is now geared toward our continuum of Israel experiences for young people, the natural conclusion of which is aliyah (along with lifelong commitment to Jewish life),” he wrote in an email. “It may reasonably be said that aliyah lies at the core of everything we do, as well as of our entire organizational budget.”
Regarding the Fellowship’s new aliyah program, Mayer said: “Since we are the only organization with the comprehensive, on-the-ground infrastructure necessary for aliyah activities, anyone who wishes to participate in those activities will have to make use of our infrastructure.”
Rabbi Eckstein stressed that his aliyah program would not compete but rather complement the Jewish Agency’s efforts. He pointed out that in the last 20 years, his organization gave the Jewish Agency $170 million for aliyah. And in the last 15 years, he said, it gave $25 million annually to Jews in the former Soviet Union through those on the ground there — the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint), Chabad and local rabbis.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews was founded in 1983 to promote understanding and cooperation between Christians and Jews and to support the State of Israel. It has 1.4 million Christian donors, Rabbi Eckstein said.
According to the 2013 financial statement on its website, the Fellowship’s total income was $113.5 million.
It’s how the Fellowship appeals to the Christian community to raise that money that troubles some Jewish leaders.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he has “never been comfortable with recruiting and soliciting money from Christians to save Jewish souls and Jewish lives. … He does it by saying the Jewish people and the Jewish state are not taking care of their own. … If you watch their videos, it will make you sick.”
One video on the Fellowship’s website shows an elderly Jew crying while Rabbi Eckstein tells viewers: “Ukraine is in chaos and the Jewish community, the elderly survivors of the Holocaust, are bearing the brunt of this chaos. They are standing alone and feel abandoned by the world. They lock their doors against roaming mobs. And the Jewish people call out, ‘From whence will my salvation come?’ We can help with a simple gift of $25 or more …”
Another video shows the emaciated body of a Holocaust victim being dragged along the ground and another shows Holocaust victims piled in a mound while Rabbi Eckstein speaks about Holocaust survivors living today throughout the former Soviet Union “who are struggling to live, who are alone, who … have to decide everyday whether they are going to use those little funds that they receive from their pension for food.”
Steven Bayme, director of the AJC’s Contemporary Jewish Life Department, said he found the use of Holocaust film clips “unacceptable. … It’s excessively alarmist.”
And Foxman said the videos’ message is wrong because Jews do take care of their own.
“To say [to Christians], ‘Only you can save a Jew and protect a Jew’ I find so repulsive. … Is he providing a vehicle for Christians to atone for their past?”
Mark Levin, executive director of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, an advocacy group on behalf of the Jews of Uraine and elsewhere, agreed, saying the Jewish Agency, the Joint and other international relief organizations are also on the ground in Ukraine.
“There are people who are in very difficult situations and these organizations are doing an incredible job trying to reach those in need in the Jewish community in Ukraine and in the rest of the region,” he said.
Despite the concerns about Rabbi Eckstein’s pitch, Jewish groups welcomed his work on the ground.
“Rabbi Eckstein is also doing an incredible job trying to reach those in need. Given the current circumstances in Ukraine, it is a Herculean effort,” Levin said.
Bayme agreed, noting that while “Jews take care of our own, we do welcome it when others contribute, just as we welcome U.S. foreign aid for Israel. And one major pillar in the U.S.-Israel relationship is the degree of Christian support for Israel.
“To the extent Rabbi Eckstein is able to rally support for Israel, that is welcome,” he said.
Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee who just returned after four months in Ukraine, applauded the efforts of the Jewish Agency there but added: “If another group wants to help with aliyah, let them do it.”
As to the poor Jews in Ukraine shown in the Fellowship’s video, Kliger said he found “flourishing Jewish communities with synagogues, yeshivas and universities” in areas outside of the conflict zone in the east.
He added that Jewish groups worked to “register every single poor and elderly Jew — every Holocaust survivor.” It’s impossible to reach everybody, he said, “So probably there are some people who do feel alone and don’t have money for medicine or for food. … but it is not widespread.”
“Any help would be very much appreciated, whether from Christians or Jews — everyone of good will is welcome,” he added. “They [the Fellowship] have very good intentions and noble goals and I don’t want to criticize their efforts. I want to praise them.”
Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said the monopoly the Jewish Agency once had over aliyah ended in 2002 when Nefesh B’Nefesh began an aliyah program from the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
“At the end of the day, more people will make aliyah just as more automakers created competition that resulted in more people buying cars,” he said. “Competition may turn out to be good for overall aliyah.”
Sarna said he is not troubled by the Fellowship’s appeal to Evangelical Christians, who believe that if all Jews moved to Israel the Christian messiah would come. He said there is a similar belief among Jews.
“There are those who say that the Jews are a small people and need help from whatever source,” Sarna said. “When the messiah comes, we’ll ask if this is his first or second visit.
“Until then, why not befriend those who want to help us?” he added. “Rabbi Eckstein has over the years demonstrated that his organization can accomplish a great deal of good, and in that respect he has earned the right to be involved.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
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Contributing Editor Nathan Jeffay was concerned when an unabashed right-winger succeeded Shimon Peres as Israel's president this summer, opposing the two-state solution. But Nathan has changed his mind and Reuven Rivlin, and he explains why.
Rivlin Right For Israel?
The unabashedly rightist new president addressing country’s internal problems with surprising force.
Contributing Editor
Reuven Rivlin is seen having a chance to heal what he calls a “sick” society. Getty Images
When the results of this summer’s Israeli presidential election came through, I was in the dentist’s waiting room. All of a sudden, my sense of anxiety grew from the next half-hour to the next seven years.
Five months on, however, I eat humble pie and recognize that Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin is the right man for Israel in 2014.
The new head-of-state is an unashamed rightist who rejects the two-state solution and admires the settlements. Rivlin has stood in Hebron and other West Bank locations, and declared Israel’s rights there to be uncompromising.
I disagree with him.
As Nobel Peace Prize-winning Shimon Peres, the darling of the international community, stepped down, Israel was left in the hands of a man whose opinions on Israel’s presence beyond 1967 borders are contemptible to much of the world. Peres took every opportunity to preach peace, constantly warning that failure to reach a two-state solution could threaten Israel’s future as a Jewish state. Rivlin’s views are the polar opposite.
Peres was right, but Israel needs Rivlin.
The quintessential peacenik, Peres was and is a national treasure. He excelled in the presidency, and gave the position new relevance. But he spoke of what for most Israelis is, at best, a distant future, and one whose arrival is out of his hands and theirs.
The theme of his final Israeli Presidential Conference summed up his term in office. Titled “Facing Tomorrow,” it was a chance to dream about the Israel of the future — its technology, its innovations, and its peace deal. Peres gave Israel the message of hope that it desperately needed during the depressing days of the global economic crisis and the transformation of Gaza into a Hamas-ruled terror base.
Peres’ message to the public was comforting. He said that so long as you don’t give up hope for peace, everything will be OK. People could nod along and say that they were on board just as soon as Jerusalem and Ramallah get their acts together. Nothing more was needed from them. The nation didn’t feel challenged by him.
Rivlin, by contrast, is making people feel uncomfortable, and rightly so. Israeli society has serious internal problems, which he has started to address with unimaginable forcefulness since he assumed office. And precisely because he’s not Peacenik Peres, but rather a man of the right, he’s hard to ignore. Nobody can cast aspersions on his motives for speaking out.
Two weeks ago, Rivlin said: “The tension between Jews and Arabs within the State of Israel has risen to record heights, and the relationship between all parties has reached a new low. We have all witnessed the shocking sequence of incidents and violence taking place by both sides.”
He said that the “epidemic of violence” is everywhere. Then, really hammering his point home, he declared: “It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is sick — and it is our duty to treat this disease.”
Last week, Rivlin visited the northern Arab town of Kafr Qasim, along with local authority heads from neighboring Jewish towns. He took part in a memorial for an incident in 1956 that saw Israeli border police kill 48 Arab civilians — deaths that a court later declared illegally perpetrated — and his office described the event as a “massacre.” He declared: “We must understand what occurred here. We must educate future generations, about this difficult chapter, and the lessons which we learn from it.” He stated that the Arab minority “will always be a fundamental component of Israel society.”
Soon after assuming office, he chose Israel’s largest Arab town, Umm al-Fahm, as the destination for his first visit, and throughout the summer’s Hamas-Israel conflict he worked hard to limit the fallout in terms of Arab-Jewish relations within Israel.
The two-state solution will not succeed or fail based on Israel’s largely ceremonial head of state. But Rivlin’s dogged emphasis on citizenship, with all its rights and responsibilities, can do much to heal a fractured society. He is proving himself to be a man of deeply ingrained principle, who can call the bluff of those on the Israeli right who betray their movement, and tell them to stop using politics as an excuse for thuggery.
He is the man to speak to the likes of the soccer fans who, in one of the most shocking displays of the aggressive ideology taking hold among growing numbers of Israeli youths, went on the rampage in a Jerusalem mall, beating up Arab workers a couple of years ago. He is the man to address those who make excuses for the Jewish extremists who murdered the Arab teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July. He is the man to address the “price tag” vandals, who attack mosques as misguided political protest when they deem the government’s actions to be bad for the settlements.
They can’t dismiss his hawkish credentials. And he explains more eloquently and more passionately than any Israeli public figure around that this is not the way of the Israeli right. In Kafr Qasim he quoted the founder of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the ideological father of the Zionist right, on the need to protect civil rights.
I can already see Israeli Jews starting to think differently; starting to draw more distinction between what is “politics” and what is simply respect for fellow citizens of a different ethnicity.
Rivlin, since he took office, has also assuaged initial fears that he may be on a collision course with diaspora Jewry. He has stressed the importance of Jewish unity and respect between Jewish movements, in an apparent attempt to shake the reputation as antagonistic to non-Orthodox Jewry that stems from comments he made 25 years ago.
These are challenging days for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis are increasingly skeptical of the chances of a two-state solution, and exploring alternatives, including the one that seems to interest Rivlin, namely annexing the West Bank.
As the murder of Yitzchak Rabin 19 years ago this week showed, there can be a slippery slope from the “Whole Land of Israel” ideology in to lawless conduct on sovereign Israeli territory. Rivlin, a man who balances this ideology with a deep liberalism, is the moral and ethical figure needed to guide Israel though this period of regrouping.
The dream of an Israeli president being able to single-handedly usher in an era of peace is unrealistic. But Rivlin is proving that, internally, he can help to save the nation from itself, drawing red lines between legitimate political discourse and the perils of racism and undemocratic behavior.
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My column focuses on a quiet, non-dramatic but historic move taken in Israel this week that may go a long way toward resolving the state's growing conversion crisis.
Conversions Vote Loosens Grip Of Chief Rabbinate
Move paves the way for moderation in religious affairs.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
A young woman seeking to marry in Israel is told by the Chief Rabbinate that in order to prove that she is Jewish, and thus qualified to wed in the state, she must bring proof, via a photograph, of her grandmother’s grave in London.
A young man, in a similar situation, is told he must verify the Jewishness of his great-grandmother, who died in Europe and whose final resting place is unknown.
There are many stories like these of people frustrated in their efforts to attest to their Jewishness in satisfying a Chief Rabbinate known for its efforts “to keep the gates closed, not open,” according to Ephraim Halevy, an Israeli intelligence expert and former head of the Mossad. In recent years he has been actively campaigning, here and in Israel, to ease the Chief Rabbinate’s hold on matters of personal status, like marriage, divorce, burial and, most pressingly, conversion.
“The procedures have become ever more hostile and devoid of human compassion,” he told me last Friday, asserting that a failure to assimilate hundreds of thousands of Russians into Israeli society as Jews presents a great risk to the survival of the Jewish state from within.
Now, though, after a cabinet vote on Sunday that took place with little drama, fanfare or international attention, the crisis may be easing. After months of political haggling, threats and compromises, the cabinet approved the creation of rabbinic courts for conversion beyond the small group of charedi courts established by the Chief Rabbinate. While lacking the full clout of a Knesset-approved law, the cabinet decision represents an historic achievement in the long battle to make conversion in Israel more accessible.
Decentralizing the process and loosening the grip of the Chief Rabbinate could go a long way toward resolving what is arguably the Jewish state’s most pressing domestic dilemma, with ramifications for world Jewry as well.
In an interview here two days before the vote, Halevy noted that there are an estimated 300,000 Russians living in Israel, married to Jews or the children of a Jewish father and seeking to be fully accepted in society. The inability until now to find a sympathetic solution to the conversion problem presented what he called an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Halevy said the election last year of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau and Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef (both the sons of former chief rabbis) did not ease the situation of the last two decades during which a charedi hold on the office has resulted in more stringent standards for marriage, conversion, etc.
But in predicting a successful outcome in the cabinet vote, he said “this is a propitious moment for change,” in part because the current coalition has no religious parties that would oppose the easing of conversion regulations, making it easier for the Russians and other non-Jews living in Israel to convert and marry as Jews.
Benjamin Ish-Shalom, a professor and founder of the Beit Morasha Institute in Jerusalem, a leading voice for inclusivity and moderation in religious affairs, accompanied Halevy on the U.S. visit last week. He said that the expansion of conversion courts would offer more “user-friendly” options, particularly to the younger generation. “People now will have the opportunity to choose the rabbis they want” to study with for conversion.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founding rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan and chief rabbi of the community of Efrat, and Rabbi David Stav, the head of Tzohar, a group of Modern Orthodox Israeli rabbis and whose campaign for Chief Rabbi last year called for a more considerate rabbinate, are among the rabbis expected to head up new conversion courts.
In recent years, with the Chief Rabbinate’s strict policies in place, applications for conversion had dwindled.
Rabbi Seth Farber, a former New Yorker whose organization in Israel, ITIM, has played a key role in helping people navigate the bureaucracy of the Chief Rabbinate in dealing with matters of personal religious status, predicts that 10 to 20 new conversion courts will be created in the next year and that conversions will soon double or triple in number. But he warned that the chief rabbis, who by law must approve the conversion certificates, could refuse to do so.
Critics of the Chief Rabbinate say this would be an abuse of power, since the chief rabbis represent the state. Rabbi Farber said his organization, which played a key role in drafting the new policy, is prepared to go to court against them, as it has in the past, if necessary.
Although the new rabbinic conversion courts will involve only Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Farber pointed out that the American Jewish federation movement and Conservative and Reform leaders in the U.S. played a key role in advocating for the new policy.
He noted that Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, attended a Knesset meeting on the issue last week, and that Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly, were helpful throughout the process.
“They showed a lot of responsibility for the good of the Jewish community,” Rabbi Farber said.
He added that while the cabinet solution is far from ideal, “it opens the door a little,” and if successful, could continue to expand in scope and depth.
The Israel Democracy Institute, which also was instrumental in the passage of the new policy, called the decision “historic.” But the IDI said “it is not enough,” pointing out that a future cabinet, presumably with religious parties in the coalition, could overturn the decision. The IDI also noted that the Chief Rabbinate maintains the power to reject conversion certificates, and could even seek to annul conversions retroactively.
All true. But one would hope that the chief rabbis recognize that the same democratic process that saw them elected applies here, and sense the growing frustration in Israeli society with the Chief Rabbinate’s status quo of resistance.
One would hope.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Also this week, Bibi's bind over Temple Mount tensions; UJA-Federation kickoff eventraises record $48 million; the history of the Jews in 10 jokes; change and pushback in wake of the mikvah scandal; an Editorial response to a prominent rabbi's comparison of The Jewish Week to Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer; Helena Rubinstein's views on beautyon view at The Jewish Museum; and Erica Brown on the power of small kindnesses.
Bibi’s Bind Over Temple Mount Tensions
Prime minister is caught between the demands of the right and good relations with Jordan.
Israel Correspondent
After the asasination attempt, Israel closed the Temple Mount for the first time in 14 years. Joshua Mitnick/JW
Tel Aviv — The conference at the end of last month was meant as a 20th anniversary celebration of Israel and Jordan’s peace treaty, but the situation on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem prompted Walid Obeidat, Jordan’s ambassador, to throw a little cold water on the festivities.
Rising tension between right-wing Jewish activists and Arab worshipers over access to the holy plaza in the Old City had rippled around the Middle East in recent weeks, as the contested city grapples with months of chronic unrest. And Jordan, which is recognized in the peace treaty with Israel as the custodian of the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount, didn’t let it pass without comment.
“Jordan expects all attempts and calls to alter the status quo in the Haram Al Sharif, Aqsa Mosque to be stopped,” he said at the Oct. 26 event, referring to the Temple Mount area as the “Muslim Noble Sanctuary.” “If allowed to continue, it will imperil the treaty.”
The turmoil only escalated. Three days later, a motorcycle gunman fired several bullets into Yehuda Glick, an American-born Temple Mount activist as he emerged from a conference he had organized on the topic. In response, Israeli security authorities completely shut access to the Temple Mount to all visitors for the first time in 14 years — angering both Jews and Muslims.
The dozens of security guards posted at entryways to the Temple Mount prompted Palestinians in the Old City to gripe that Israel was cutting them off from their holy site while allowing Jews access to the Western Wall. The Jerusalem Mufti called for international intervention to break the Israeli hold on the Temple Mount, while someone nearby called for “Islamic armies” to do it.
Temple Mount activists claimed that Jews were being penalized for the actions of the would-be assassin — allegedly a former security prisoner with links to Islamic Jihad. The proper response to the attempted assassination, right wing politicians argued, would have been to expand access for Jewish activists who are placed under tight restrictions and scrutiny.
“It’s not understood and not appreciated,” said David Ha’ivri, a Temple Mount activist and colleague of Glick. “If they are really concerned with violence on the Temple Mount, they need to deal with the people they suspect of acting in a violent way.”
Stepping aside from family at the intensive care ward at Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem, Yaakov Glick said he agreed with his brother’s call for Jewish prayer even if there is fallout. Shying away from the Temple Mount because of threats would be akin to stopping the Jerusalem light rail from running through Arab neighborhoods because of rock throwing, he said.
“The simple law is that anybody can go up on the Temple Mount as long as it doesn’t instigate any violence. … It is a policy, but polices can be changed,” the brother said.
“You can put your head into the ground. … But we believe we have rights there. I agree with my brother’s cause,” he added.
The clashing demands on the Israeli government highlight the bind that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself in over the Temple Mount as security forces struggle to calm four months of festering violence in Israel.
On the one hand, many leading politicians from his Likud party seem to be increasingly sympathetic to activists like Glick and want the government to grant increased access. Temple Mount activist groups called for a mass ascent by supporters on Wednesday morning with leading rabbis and Knesset members.
On the other hand, the rising tensions around the Temple Mount have got the attention of the entire Middle East even though many Arab countries are mired in domestic strife: in Lebanon, Druze leader Walid Joublatt tweeted that right-wing Israelis “have already invaded [the al Aqsa Mosque] like they invaded Hebron.”
But the prime minister is most concerned with Jordan, which maintains tight security collaboration with Israel and has gas and water deals as well, despite a chilly outward relationship. In the days before the 20th anniversary of the peace treaty, King Abdallah likened Israeli religious hardliners to ISIS — a remark that offended many in Israel.
The remark by Ambassador Obeidat was likely formulated by the monarchy, said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan, who said that Jordan had escalated public rhetoric against Israel in response to the deterioration in Jerusalem.
Though disturbing, such remarks are to be expected because of Jordan’s status as the formal custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, he said. Jordan could not remain silent when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Muslims to “defend” the Al Aqsa Mosque by any means necessary.
Abbas was slammed by Netanyahu this week after the Palestinian president sent condolences to the family of the 32-year-old suspected shooter, Moutaz Hijaizi, killed by police last Thursday in a pre-dawn clash after the attack on Glick.
Despite the appearance of tension between Israel and Jordan, the Israeli prime minister has kept up a steady dialogue with the monarchy. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Netanyahu traveled secretly to Jordan to discuss Jerusalem last weekend. Even if that’s not accurate, Eran said the two leaders speak regularly by phone and Israeli envoys are frequent visitors to Jordan.
“Jordan is in a delicate situation right now. They haven’t been invaded or attacked by the ISIS extremists. And in order to not give them ammunition, they have to still come across as the protector of the Temple Mount,” said Sam Lehman Wilzig, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University.
“The king understands what’s going on here, he understand that there’s slippage and there’s more support for these movements,” he added.
But Housing Minister Uri Ariel escalated the rhetoric, writing on his Facebook page last Friday that the Jordanians had “forgot” who won the 1967 war and that the Temple Mount and Jerusalem are under Israeli sovereignty “just like Amman is under total Jordanian control. They would do well to absorb that,” he wrote.
That prompted a statement by the prime minister calling on his cabinet to moderate their remarks in order to allow tensions to cool down. He reiterated once again that the status quo at the religious site would not change.
Netanyahu has acted like the “responsible adult” regarding the Temple Mount in the face of pressure from allies to change the status quo, said Danny Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and activist for a shared Jerusalem.
But that is likely to risk a political erosion with his supporters, said Ha’ivri.
“Netanyahu is trying through King Abdallah … is to speak to the Muslim world, to those who are trying to ignite a fight over this issue. He’s trying to say that, ‘I hear your concern, and don’t worry everything will be alright,’” he said.
“Netanyahu should be worried, because there are a lot of people in Likud, and [in] his voter pool, that want to let him open up the Temple mount to prayer. So he’s going to have to figure it out.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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‘Ace’ Greenberg’s Presence Felt At UJA-Fed. Campaign Launch
An icon of Jewish philanthropy was remembered, and a record $48 million raised.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
UJA Fed. of N.Y. President Alisa Doctoroff honors Ace Greenberg at last week's event. Courtesy of UJA Federation of N.Y.
For more than 25 years, the UJA-Federation of New York’s launch of its fundraising season was so closely associated with the man who hosted it that the annual soiree of top-tier donors became known as the “Greenberg event.”
This year’s gathering was the first since Alan “Ace” Greenberg died last summer at the age of 86. But the longtime UJA-Federation volunteer and Bear Stearns chairman was a strong presence at last week’s event, where the charity noted the creation of the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award in his honor.
Attendees reminisced about the man whose devotion to philanthropy inspired those around him to donate tens of millions of dollars each year to a cause he held dear.
This year’s event raised $48 million — $2 million more than last year and an all-time record, according to the Federation. The gathering of more than 150 people included former Israeli President Shimon Peres, who was interviewed by the organization’s CEO, Eric S. Goldstein.
“This past summer demonstrated in the clearest terms why our annual campaign matters,” Goldstein said in a statement. “These are the funds that sustain an unparalleled network of beneficiary agencies that provide for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and respond with immediate and life-saving measures in Israel, Ukraine, and wherever there are Jews in need. And at the same time, we’re supporting Jewish life and education. There is no other organization that has that breadth of reach, and it all starts on the night of campaign launch — thanks to the incredible generosity of our community’s leading philanthropists.”
Cindy Golub, a member of the charity’s executive committee and chair of its division of women’s philanthropy, called the energy at the 2015 Annual Campaign launch “palpable.”
“I always find the event very powerful because there are so many very committed people in one room who really believe in the collective responsibility of the Jewish people,” she said.
Lynne Koeppel, Greenberg’s daughter, said the evening was “a very nice tribute” and the young leadership award was an apt way to memorialize her father. “He loved the UJA and he particularly loved getting young people involved,” Koeppel said in a telephone interview this week.
She said it wasn’t easy to attend the first campaign launch since her father’s death. “It was kind of hard to have the Greenberg event without the Greenberg, at least for me,” she said. But still, she said the night’s atmosphere was upbeat.
“It wasn’t somber at all. It was more about gratitude and reminiscing,” she said. “It was a celebration of all the things he did.”
Golub agreed. “The mood was very positive, I think people were very happy that they could pay tribute to him,” she said.
Speakers reminisced about Greenberg’s “card calling,” his technique of asking donors to announce the size of their contributions in front of each other. Despite the direct method, Greenberg managed to do it in a way that left everyone feeling good, Koeppel said.
“He just made you feel very proud,” she said. “He gushed over each announcement. He treated the $1,000 donors the same way he treated the $1 million donors, which was a very nice thing.”
William Mack, a UJA-Federation board member who chairs the capital gifts committee, hosted this year’s event with his wife, Phyllis.
“I’ve always had great admiration for Ace and for the event, and my parents were very active in UJA and attendees of the event before me. The event was a tradition in the family,” he said.
Having Peres as the special guest was a reunion of sorts for the Macks. They first met him several years ago at the then-president’s home in Israel. “He’s very charming, he’s very diplomatic. He’s worldly and his knowledge is very broad,” Mack said, adding that even at the age of 91, Peres still “talks with a clear head and clear mind.”
amyclark@jewishweek.org
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Change, Pushback In Wake Of Mikvah Scandal
New conversion roles for women provoke pro and con responses within Orthodox community.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Write
Last Thursday night, a meeting at Drisha Institute, a local program of advanced Jewish textual study for women, attracted an eclectic crowd of 45 community members, clergymen and women rabbinical students. The topic du jour was boundaries on rabbinic authority, and the mood was upbeat.
“There’s been an implosion in our community thanks to one bad egg,” said one attendee, referring to Rabbi Barry Freundel, the Orthodox rabbi from Washington, D.C., who allegedly planted video cameras in the local mikvah to watch women bathe in the nude. He asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The scandal has prompted a whirlwind of responses and already led to what some are calling unprecedented changes. The most significant one is a decision by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest council of Orthodox rabbis worldwide, which has established a committee to review its conversion process. It consists of six men and five women whose professions include an attorney, educator, psychotherapist and a Yoetzet Halacha, who advises women on family purity laws. The change represents the largest appointment of women to an RCA committee in the group’s 80-year history, according to Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, a former RCA president and rabbi in Englewood, N.J., who will chair the committee. The group will review the Beit Din of America’s Geirus Protocol and Standards (GPS), which Rabbi Freundel played a key role in creating, and will suggest safeguards against possible future abuses.
The establishment of the RCA review committee “has been on books for a long time,” said Rabbi Goldin. “What happened in D.C. just added to the urgency of the matter.”
Despite widespread enthusiasm in the Orthodox community, within the RCA, the appointment of the new committee has already met some resistance. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, a member of the executive committee of the RCA and rabbi of largest Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck, N.J., resigned as head of the conversion court of Bergen County, N.J. He declined to speak to The Jewish Week, but on his personal blog he expressed concerns that the new committee will “water down the standards” for conversion.
Rabbi Pruzansky asserted that the RCA conversion policies in place for the last several years were working well and accused the Council of bending to media pressure and promoting “the agenda of feminists.”
“The committee consists of six men and five women, bolstering the trend on the Orthodox left to create quasi-rabbinical functions for women,” he wrote. He questioned whether there is a role for women in reviewing the conversion process, which he said is a “purely rabbinical role.”
Updating his blog in response to The Jewish Week’s initial online story last Thursday about his resignation, the rabbi was upset that the post misidentified the conversion court from which he stepped down (a correction was posted later the same day) and with a phrase that said he had “shared the company” of Rabbi Freundel on the RCA executive committee. The phrase was not intended to suggest, as Rabbi Pruzansky inferred, that he was “somehow … connected to the alleged malfeasance in D.C.”
(According to their rabbinic colleagues, though, the two rabbis were politically aligned in an unsuccessful challenge to the 2012 RCA slate of officers, calling for the group to resist more open approaches to Orthodoxy. Had Rabbi Freundel’s campaign succeeded he would have been president of the RCA at the time of his arrest.)
In his post, Rabbi Pruzansky compared The Jewish Week and its publisher to Julius Streicher and Der Sturmer, the central vehicle of the Nazi propaganda machine, noting that both “dealt a lot with Jews. Same business, I suppose. That’s bad company to be in.” (See Editorial on page 6.)
Responding to Rabbi Pruzansky’s claim that the previous GPS system was working well,” one female convert called his remarks “bogus.”
“The problem with GPS is that it wasn’t followed,” she said, preferring to remain anonymous in order to protect her privacy. “Rabbi Freundel wrote that code, and he didn’t even follow his own standards. If this scandal taught us anything, it’s that no one is beyond the pale of suspicion. Some healthy mistrust could have done the Jewish community a lot of good in this situation,” she said.
Skylar Bader, a female convert who pens the popular blog “You’re Not Crazy: Becoming Orthodox Without Questioning Your Sanity,” thought Rabbi Pruzansky’s concerns “completely missed the point.”
“The real problem is that the RCA failed to follow-up on the myriad of complaints they received about Freundel” long before his arrest, she said.
Rabbi Jeffrey Fox, the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Maharat, agreed that systematic reform is necessary when it comes to standards for conversion. He drafted a call for three rabbis who are there to confirm that the woman fully immersed herself — to stand outside the room and rely on a woman to witness the immersion.
Several Orthodox rabbis told The Jewish Week it is already common practice for them to stand outside the room and be told by the female mikvah attendant when the convert has completed her immersion.
Rabbanit Michal Tikochinsky, director of a rabbinical studies program for women in Israel, said in a phone interview conducted in Hebrew that “the idea of a woman immersing in a mikvah before men, even if she is covered from head to toe, is disturbing.”
She noted that she published an article in 2007 in the Akdamot Journal of Jewish Thought advocating for several alternatives to the practice of men being present in the room when a female convert immerses in the mikvah.
In addition to these moves, several institutions are also making changes.
Young Israel of Woodmere, a Modern Orthodox synagogue with 1,000 families, has appointed a committee of male and female health professionals and legal experts to draft a protocol for how to deal with allegations of sexual abuse that may arise.
Yeshivat Maharat, the first American yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox clergy, drafted a teshuva (rabbinic response to a question of Jewish law) this week advocating reform of the practice of three male rabbis being present when a female convert immerses in the mikvah.
And the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF), an organization of Orthodox rabbis that serves as a more liberal alternative to the RCA (accepting, female Orthodox clergy as full members, for example), is evaluating its conversion processes with hopes of appointing women to managerial roles.
Though significant strides have been taken to advance women’s roles within the American Orthodox Jewish community, it has yet to train women as full judges who can serve on religious courts. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founding rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue and the current chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone, a network of Modern Orthodox yeshivot, is taking that next step. Ohr Torah Stone’s Midreshet Lindenbaum College in Jerusalem began instructing its first cohort of women judges (dayanot) in 2012. The rigorous seven-year program will train its first cohort of 14 women to make independent rulings on Jewish law and convene their own all-female religious courts.
“The only historical problem of women serving as judges is the concern that their decisions won’t be accepted in a world where men assume halachic leadership,” he said in a phone interview. “That norm is changing.”
Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, feels that the change hastened by Rabbi Freundel’s arrest is “here to stay.”
“People who never would have identified as ‘liberal’ or ‘feminist’ are supporting this,” she said, referring to the RCA’s new involvement of women. “Everyone is in support of giving women a seat at the table, and encouraging women to speak their minds,” she said.
Weiss-Greenberg, who sat with other her fellow community members at Drisha’s open space forum, addressed the group’s frustration and angst with optimism.
“We shouldn’t have needed a scandal to see progress. But, at the end of the day, that’s what we got. There’s been movement, there’s been change. That’s the silver lining.”
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A Rabbi’s Low Blow
So we were particularly disheartened when a member of the executive committee of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) and spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, an 800-member synagogue, the largest Orthodox congregation in Teaneck, N.J., took to his blog last week to compare The Jewish Week to an infamous Nazi newspaper.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, who has described “Jewish journalism” as an “oxymoron,” was upset that our initial online report last week on his resignation as head of a conversion court erred in identifying it as the Beth Din of America when in fact it was the Beit Din of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County. (We corrected the mistake later that day.) He was particularly disturbed with a phrase that said he had “shared the company” of Rabbi Barry Freundel on the RCA executive committee. Rabbi Freundel was arrested in Washington, D.C., last month for voyeurism at the mikvah.
We regret the use of the phrase, which was not intended to suggest, as Rabbi Pruzansky inferred, that he was “somehow … connected to the alleged malfeasance in DC.”
(According to their rabbinic colleagues, though, the two men were politically aligned in an unsuccessful challenge to the RCA slate of officers elected in 2012, calling for the group to resist more open approaches to Orthodoxy.)
Here, in part, is what Rabbi Pruzansky wrote about us:
“They should apologize. But, I guess, to follow their way of reporting, both The Jewish Week’s publisher and Julius Streicher (Der Sturmer) published newspapers that dealt a lot with Jews. Same business, I suppose. That’s bad company to be in.”
Der Sturmer, of course, was the central vehicle of the Nazi propaganda machine.
We find the comparison outrageous, particularly coming from a leading community rabbi and RCA executive member. And to date, the lack of a public expression of remorse from the rabbi and the institutions he serves, or is affiliated with, speaks volumes.
editor@Jewishweek.org
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The Make-up Of A Style Maker
Helena Rubinstein’s eclectic take on beauty on view at The Jewish Museum.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Among the family photographs, vintage advertisements for Helena Rubinstein cosmetics, portraits by leading artists, works from her distinctive collection of European and Latin-American modern art as well as African and Oceanic folk art, items of clothing and jewelry, and her collection of miniature rooms, viewers can almost feel the presence of Madame, as she was known.
The 4-foot-10 icon was a self-made powerhouse. While she may not have used the word feminism, she viewed her business as advancing women’s freedom. She saw makeup as a way for women to make choices for themselves and assert their independence. Both wealthy and working women found her approach and her products appealing.
Helena Rubinstein had a kind of fairy tale life, making the trajectory from growing up in Poland to building a major international cosmetics empire and transforming the way women think about beauty. But as curator Mason Klein points out in an interview with The Jewish Week, fairy tales can be embellished, and sometimes details like dates are hard to pin down. As he writes in the handsome book that accompanies the show, “Beauty is Power” (Yale University Press), she was “famously unforthcoming with details of her early life.”
Rubinstein was born Chaja Rubinstein in Krakow, Poland, in 1872, to an Orthodox family. She was the oldest daughter of eight sisters (four other siblings died early), and in a family photo from around 1888, she is at the center, looking regal and stylish. Her father arranged for her to marry an older man that same year and she rejected his choice, and instead left home to live with an aunt for the next eight years. Some say that her father pursued the match after learning of her romance with a non-Jewish medical student.
Independent in spirit, she made her way from Krakow to Vienna to live with another aunt, and then to Melbourne, Australia, where she had other relatives, bringing along some of the skin cream her mother used in Poland. Barely speaking English, she soon opened her first beauty salon and established a business producing a skin cream called Valaze — she had success marketing her cream to Australian women whose pale skin was affected by the harsh climate. “Beauty is Power. Dr. Lykuski’s Valaze Will Make You Beautiful” was an early advertising headline. (Lykuski was a Hungarian chemist in Krakow who created the cream her mother used in Poland, blending herbs, essence of almonds and extract from the bark of the Carpathian fir tree.)
Rubinstein grew the business in Sydney and Wellington, New Zealand, and then moved into the European market, opening salons in London and Paris. In 1908, she married Edward Titus, a Polish-born Jewish American journalist she had met in Australia; he had literary aspirations and creative ideas about copywriting, advertising and public relations. Their marriage wasn’t particularly happy, but they had two sons, Roy and Horace. (They divorced in 1937). She was determined to launch the business in America, and opened her first New York salon in 1915.
When we hear the word salon, we think of a contemporary hairdresser’s shop, but Rubinstein had in mind something altogether different. At her beauty salons, inspired by European literary salons, she wanted to teach women how to improve their looks and also wanted them to learn about art and design to broaden their outlooks about beauty — and ultimately to express their own personalities.
In 1936, she opened her flagship salon at 715 Fifth Ave., with seven floors, a library, auditorium and café, with exhibitions like an art museum. In many of the company’s ads, Madame’s image was featured, with her clear and radiant skin and her hair usually pulled back in a severe but elegant chignon. Sometimes she’d wear a white medical coat.
One wall of the exhibition features portraits Rubinstein commissioned from artists including Christian Berard, Roberto Montenegro and Graham Sutherland (an Andy Warhol drawing, created when she met him on tour in Japan, hangs in another gallery). Some of the portraits make her look exotic and most make her look younger than her years, with the exception of the Sutherland, which she didn’t like at first as she looks her age (then in her 80s). She is wearing what was once a Balenciaga evening gown that is now shortened into a day dress.
Another wall includes a series of sketches done by Pablo Picasso, showing Rubinstein from a number of angles, with a range of expressions, not all of them becoming. For decades she had been trying to commission Picasso to paint her portrait, but he would decline. He made these sketches in 1955, after she appeared at his home on the French Riviera They were to be studies for a future painting, which he never made. Nor did she ever see these. Here, they are exhibited in the United States for the first time.
The galleries are filled with many faces; both her occupation and her preoccupation were described as the theater of the face. The biggest smiles in the show come from a pair of Mexican masks, with a man and woman laughing, circa 600 to 700. Rubinstein owned many works by Elie Nadelman, a Polish-born sculptor she met in London in 1911. That year, she bought an entire gallery show of his work and featured many of his smooth-faced modern interpretations of classical works in her salons; she also sponsored his move to New York.
Her collection included paintings by Henri Matisse, Fernando Leger, Picasso and Frida Kalho. Rubinstein met Kalho and Diego Rivera in 1940 on a trip to Mexico City. She acquired some of their work. Intrigued by Kalho’s exotic looks and personality, she wrote of their “bonds of simpatico.”
Another gallery features jewelry and clothing and a Venetian rococo mirror, also seen nearby in a magazine shoot in her apartment that was published in a 1956 issue of Life. Glance into the mirror and lots of African figurines from the previous room come into view.
The seven miniature rooms, all on loan from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, include a Victorian English parlor and Amedeo Modigliani’s Paris studio; they are filled with the most refined of dollhouse-sized furnishings. Klein explains that Rubinstein had a lifelong fascination with miniatures and would tell a story about her father’s gardener — Klein’s not sure they had a gardener — carving tiny figures for her.
In 1938, she married again, to Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, who may or may not have been of Georgian nobility, more than 20 years her junior. The press would sometimes call her Princess Gourielli
At a time when many Jews changed their names in the public sphere, she stayed with Rubinstein. Klein points out that she wasn’t a practicing Jew, but didn’t hide her identity. She employed her sisters and other relatives in the business. One sister who stayed in Europe was murdered during the Shoah. During the war, her palatial home in Paris was occupied by the Nazis, and they used her classical sculpture for shooting practice.
Her Judaism came up when she tried to rent an apartment at 625 Park Ave. in 1941 and she was told they wouldn’t rent to her because they didn’t accept Jewish tenants. So she bought the building. She was ever practical, altering evening gowns for daytime wear and bringing lunch to work, usually chicken, in a paper bag.
Rubinstein worked hard for more than seven decades. Soon after she died at age 92 in 1965, her collections were sold in auction. This exhibition is the first time they have been brought back together.
“She advocated a sense of exceptionality in a world that discourages nonconformity,” Klein says.
One of the last lines that one hears in the exhibition is from a reel of promotional films and newsreels. “No one can stay young forever.”
“Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power” is on view at The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave., through March 22, 2015.
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Kindness Matters
Erica Brown
Special To The Jewish Week
Erica Brown
Back from a shiva visit to a family who had lost a 20-year-old son in a freak accident, I marveled at the mother’s capacity — even while suffering — to notice the small kindnesses of close friends and absolute strangers. I looked her in the eyes, “But it’s nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s just the smallest thing we can do. It’s because we can’t do what we really want to do, which is to bring your son back.” I felt desperate and pathetic. Running errands, bringing food or visiting felt worthless, helpless.
I shared this frustration with a friend. Her reaction: “You’re wrong. When we were in the hospital with my dying father, we were held up by that very love. We were carried by those unexpected kindnesses. Of course, they’re not worthless.” But I still didn’t buy it. I was mistakenly thinking in terms of compensation instead of affirmation.
Small gestures of kindness matter because in a world where suffering is commonplace and despair is almost a currency, a little package of tenderness pushes away the pain if only for a moment. True, it’s a temporary salve, but it creates a moment of grace and generosity in a landscape of emotional scarcity. It fills you up just a little when you’re feeling depleted. Perhaps this is the meaning of the end of Proverbs 15:30: “…good news brings fat to the bones.” When we’re down, we need good news.
As I get older, I appreciate the preciousness of redeeming moments and no longer expect that happiness is my due. Temporary goodness is fleeting, but right now I’ll take it. On days that have been particularly rough, I’ll often tell a friend that she needs to get me one piece of good news before close of business. Just one. And one is sometimes enough because it’s all we have. The regular sharing of good news should be a daily mandate among friends. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering to do the trick.
This was a healing thought at the funeral for this young man — the second in less than two months in our broader community — while new revelations surfaced daily about Rabbi Barry Freundel’s allegedly immoral escapades. It was all that anyone was talking about. Preparing to go to the funeral I thought to myself, “How much can one community take?” These were two absolutely inexplicable wrongs (if in fact the charges against Rabbi Freundel prove true), but wrong in such different ways. And although they were not in any way connected, they mired a community in a difficult and conflicting emotional range of darkness, one fresh punch in the stomach after another.
Ironically, the funeral was a deep comfort. There was a lot of longing in the room, longing that this surreal gathering was one huge mistake. There was a lot of crying from huddles of students and friends and random outbursts of tears from parents. But for the grace of God it could have been any of us in the front row. There was also intense love in the room, the love of a community that takes care of its children, that takes pride in each of its fine young and women. It was the noble glue of living among others in a state of responsibility limned with compassion. We were all parents of this child in some cosmic and spiritual way and shared the pain, even if we could never fully imagine it, even if ultimately this family sat shiva alone.
All day I pondered why this funeral had the power to push away the dark cloud of scandal when it was itself such a dark cloud. Then I recalled a line of David Gelernter’s “Drawing Life,” his response to being the Unabomber’s 23rd victim: “…if you insert into this weird slow machine of modern life one evil act, a thousand acts of kindness will tumble out.” I read that line again and again when the book first came out to pause on a truth, and this was a big truth. We cannot stop evil. We can only respond to it with the oppositional force of kindness. The more evil, the more kindness. It’s not a theological response. It’s a practical one.
Don’t wait. Act now. In the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” We may diminish the worth of small gestures in the face of huge and mounting crisis. We may at times forget the wisdom in Psalms, “olam hesed yibane” — the world is held up by kindness [89:3]. That wisdom is not only descriptive. It’s prescriptive. Do the math. If one act of evil unleashes a thousand acts of kindness, then maybe just when we think we’re losing, we’re actually winning after all.
Erica Brown’s column appears the first week of the month. Her most recent book is “Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death” (Simon and Schuster). Subscribe to her weekly Internet essays at ericabrown.com.
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Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
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